Flood damage leaves Boulder-area residents scrambling

Insurance agent: 'I've had more calls than you can even imagine'

Water is pumped out of Bob Rea's home in Boulder on Thursday. The family is coping with the damage without flood insurance.
(CLIFF GRASSMICK)

Bob and Judy Rea are supposed to host 82 relatives this weekend for a family reunion at their south Boulder home, but 16 inches of basement floodwater say otherwise.

The Reas, both 77, have lost couches, chairs and two mattresses to water damage since Wednesday evening. Bob's computer is fried and his office trashed. Half of Judy's roughly 8,000-part photo collection is unsalvageable.

The list is sure to grow once the couple can fully assess their losses, but that won't happen until they solve a peculiar and ongoing case of "spraying toilet" -- an affliction caused by a burst sewage pipe. According to Bob, it's as bad as it sounds.

"There are people still using their toilets, and it's coming upstairs. We're still getting human waste."

Needless to say, the family reunion is on hold.

"Would you like to sit down and have dinner with us?" Bob said. "No, I don't think so. Not tonight."

Buoyed by optimism and an around-the-clock water mitigation army of offspring and grandchildren, the Reas say they'll get past this.

But like much of Boulder County, they'll likely have to do so without flood insurance.

According to FEMA's National Flood Insurance Program, 4,550 Boulder County homeowners are covered by flood insurance. That figure is well above the national per-capita average, but U.S. Census data suggests it still leaves many of the roughly 120,000 county households soaked and damaged, with dim prospects for total financial recovery.

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"Unfortunately, we know that many people don't purchase separate flood insurance for their home and for their business," said Carole Walker, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Insurance Information Association. "They either aren't aware that it's not covered by standard coverage, or they've decided not to get it."

The program facilitates agreements between the government and local communities, which makes any community eligible for flood insurance on the condition that it instate certain measures to lower future flooding risk.

Once a community qualifies -- and all but a handful in Colorado do -- the NFIP policies are then sold through private insurance companies. Some policies cost little more than $125 annually, with residential flood prevention policy limits capped at $250,000 and commercial limits at $500,000.

Policyholders in affected areas of Colorado may emerge from the flooding relatively unscathed, but the Reas and others like them won't be so lucky.

The problem can be largely attributed to a combination of hopefulness and denial. Flooding is the country's most common natural disaster, and FEMA reported the average flood-related claim has totaled more than $33,000 over the last decade, but Walker said most people ignore those facts.

"People always think that the unthinkable won't happen," she said. "Whether that's a massive forest fire or a flash flood, they don't consider how they would recover from it."

Louise Garrels, marketing manager at Boulder's McGuckin Hardware, need look no further than Thursday's inventory report to prove Walker's point. In a period of roughly 15 hours, the store sold more than 300 sump pumps (suction pumps used to de-flood basements) to what Garrels called "people who don't know what to do in a flood situation."

"There's been a lot of deer-in-headlight looks today," she said. "Who would expect that there would be this much water when they live in the plains? People in Lafayette and Erie with basements flooding, they're deluged with the amount of water that we've had coming through window wells and basement doors and windows. It's just a lot of shock."

Inattention to detail has also spelled misfortune for many homeowners this week.

"Most people don't realize that flood insurance is not part of their homeowners policy," FEMA's Jerry DeFelice said.

Added Walker, "You really need to once a year look at your insurance policy and know what it does cover and what it doesn't."

With so many people unfamiliar with their own policies, local insurance agents' phones naturally rang off the hook Thursday. More often than not, they can't offer a total solution to flooding problems.

"I've had more calls than you can even imagine," Boulder State Farm agent Pete Dawson said. "This is a really tough day for our area. What people want most, I don't know how to get. There are going to be a lot of people that are just going to have to handle it themselves."

Unlike homeowners, most Colorado drivers won't have to stress over costs associated with car damages. The majority of comprehensive car insurance plans cover those costs.

That's good news for county residents, but the insurance battle is yet to enter the notorious "aftermath" phase.

"I think the damage will continue to reveal itself," Garrels said. "It's just going to snowball. In a couple of days, once the sun finally comes up and it stops raining and people are done being in survival mode, we're going to see a lot more. That'll be the next flood."

Boulder's Lauren Mackey, 38, hasn't gotten that far yet. She never discussed the fine print on her homeowners policy with an agent, and it's coming back to her in the form of basement flooding and a two-hour wait at McGuckin for a new shipment of sump pumps.

"We asked for all the insurance that we could have, and they said something about a 100-year floodplain, and how we're not in it and don't need to worry about it," Mackey said. "Our takeaway is to not go through an insurance company, but to go to a direct insurance agent ... because we should probably have flood insurance. I guess everybody everywhere should have it."

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